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Playfied Storytelling
Workshop
http://tiny.cc/playStory
Pietro Polsinelli
@ppolsinelli
VII Summit Italiano di Architettura dell’Informazione / Bologna 15 –16 novembre 2013
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A couple of notes
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Passage: a full game.
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Digital / Analogical
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Examples
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Game
design as
a UI tool
This is the usage we are focusing.
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Problem:
RAI Cinema -> people love
movies, people don’t go to
movies.
Make them play “movie writer”.
Melt-a-Plot: UI design includes motivation.
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Problem:
Integrating social tools in the
enterprise (like anything else)
is conceptually complex and
practically hard.
Social Business Toolkit
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Meet this “thing”. Reactions?
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We have a complex theme, a friendly approach. We basically have this problem: the cards are on the
surface. And the alternative is not very friendly. It is a learning problem.
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(See mockup.)
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Turning into a strategy game
activates a feedback loop – only
the digital game can give this is a
practical, feasible way.
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Engine core is the action / task relationship.
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One idea:
progression
vs.
emergence
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Emergence is the primordial game structure, where a game is specified as a
small number of rules that combine and yield large numbers of game
variations, which the players then design strategies for dealing with. This is found in card
and board games and in most action and all strategy games. Emergence games tend to be
replayable and tend to foster tournaments and strategy guides.
Progression is the historically newer structure that entered the computer game
through the adventure genre. In progression games, the player
has to perform a
predefined set of actions in order to complete the game. One feature of
the progression game is that it yields strong control to the game designer: Since the designer
controls the sequence of events, this is also where we find the games with cinematic or
storytelling ambitions. This leads to the infamous experience of playing a game "on a rail",
i.e. where the work of the player is simply to perform the correct pre-defined moves in
order to advance the game. Progression games have walkthroughs, specifying all the actions
needed to complete the game.
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Emergence / Progression
Sim City, Braid.
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Exercise
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Progression game idea template
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Idea
Story
Main character(s)
Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
Background
What can the player(s) do?
Stories
First mission:
Missions 2, 3
Losing / winning condition
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Emergence game idea template
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Idea
Situation
Units guided by player(s)
Units guided by “artifical intelligence” (AI), combinatorics
Background
Loops
Generated strategy
What can the player do?
What gets harder?
Losing / winning condition
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Find a theme that is taught in
school and that you like. And that
maybe you don’t like how it is
being thought. Reach as far as
you can in this scheme:
Your turn.
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- Platformer?
- First person magician?
- Strategy?
- Ludo narrative dissonance?
Suggestions
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The games universe
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Self referential / Referring games
Both may be good or bad.
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Non played games.
Dear Esther, Proteus, Journey
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Games for change

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Games for change
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Oh how nice it is to work as a
slave for this multinational
http://unmanned.molleindustria.org/
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Playfied solutions
“Gamification”. Bottle bank arcade. Somemtimes, unhealthy psychological consequences.
Techniology of “fitting better”: technology for control (Foucault).
Game play is instrumental to an external goal.
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http://thegamebible.com/
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Learning & teaching
with games
from games
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Cargo Bot
http://twolivesleft.com/CargoBot/
Videogames are ideal for transmitting formal rules through concrete examples. This can cover a lot of
ground.
Also probe – test – rethink – probe cycle.
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Search energy in a 3D environment.
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The dark side
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No narrative ideal, no purpose beyond monetization. Lenses in a skeleton: The Sims Social.
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Measure, measure, measure.
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Addiction by Design Natascha Schull
http://gelconference.com/videos/2008/natasha_schull
97% is given by the slot machine – study IT

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Narrative
for / in / from / out
games
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The Magic Circle: Huizinga, Johan. 1971. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston:
Beacon Press.
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Which story?
- user gameplay story
- learning story
- author scripted story
- game generated story
- describing the game (story as ux tool)
Distinguish: emergent narrative vs. embedded narrative.
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Classical media is not interactive: depends how you look at it. There is a
branching reality, and videogames are rarely truly interactive.
http://gamamoto.com/2011/11/08/storytelling-and-video-games/
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“If one understands that
storytelling for games
has little or nothing to
do with interactive
storytelling one has
already saved oneself a
lot of trouble.”
It goes in many directions.
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Anti narrativism
http://www.whatgamesare.com/2012/05/games-dont-tell-stories-people-tell-stories.html#more
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There isn't one right way to include stories in games: Storyteller, Blackbar ...
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Feedback time?
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Short intro to
Game Design
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Example analysis: Pinball
Which are the user inputs?
Works in different media – nice on the iPad.
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Progressive views:
1.Just keep the ball in play
2.Make point rich hits
3.Reach goals
4.Complete the story
5.Solo not fun any more.
Can be fun just to show off
(high scores, show to friends).
Pinball game hermeneutics.
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Games vocabulary: article “Formal Abstract Design Tools,” designer Doug Church
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131764/formal_abstract_design_tools.php
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Game are made of loops
To analyze the mechanics of a game, you got to find the loops.
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And loops are
interesting
because of
surprises
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise
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Stick
to
basics
These are some of the mechanics – plus status competition …
This is very important in order to establish deep contact with your users: find the deep motivation.
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Is this simple mechanic union relevant only for classical games?
Union of drawing – racing
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Drawing with your finger on the iPad is nice. Racing with small cars is beautiful.
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“This game is engaging, its fun”
Engagement can be caused by disparate reasons:
1. Engagement because of s fun base mechanic
2. Engagement by using a virtual world projection mechanics
Engaging design is ambiguous: can mean engaging by using a base mechanic
(flipper, tower defence), or by using a virtual world projection mechanics
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One way to see “make it a game”.
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The flow
The blurry edge between challenging and too difficoult.
There is the flow. We are tackling the tip of something complex. When we are
kept at the margin of our abilities – it’s the flow graph. So its complex,
there are exceptions everywhere.
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Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Author)
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Stress based classification.
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Koster – Deterding definition of fun.
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“Fun is
about
learning in
a context
where there
is no
pressure”
But in school there is, and there has to be, pressure. There is here a dynamic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x5YtkTw4wn4#!
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http://codingconduct.cc/Pawned
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Fun is learning - but
learning is not always
fun.
“Fun is a feedback we
get in the mind when
absorbing patterns for
learning purposes” Koster
From “Theory of Fun”
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Game Dev Story
A small, simple game…
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Game Dev Story
reverse engineered
Game genres, …
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story/Walkthrough

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Creating working
prototypes:
Machinations, HTML5,
Unity
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Show it online: http://www.jorisdormans.nl/machinations/wiki/index.php?title=TempleRun
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Example of feedback
loop analysis: Risk
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Risk feedback loop 1: armies to territories to armies
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Risk feedback loop 2: attacks to cards to armies
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Risk feedback loop 3: attacks to continents to
armies
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Risk feedback loop 4: continents lead to being
attacked
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Other tools: HTML5, Unity.
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A game idea is not
a game prototype
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GAMES ARE EXPENSIVE...
Finding job for game creators is non trivial. And its also quite expensive.
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From “a game on Da Vinci” : Summer 2011. A
decent proto will be ready MAYBE end 2013.
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Beyond
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Persuasive UIs
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Jesse Schell
Sebastian Deterding
Chris DeLeon “Hobby game Dev”
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https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-designers
https://twitter.com/ppolsinelli/lists/game-magazines-studies
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My twitter stream is mostly
dedicated to game design:
http://twitter.com/ppolsinelli
A blog on game design
http://designagame.eu
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